Today's tow trucks and recovery vehicles come in a wide variety of designs for performing a wide variety of vehicle recovery and transport operations. These vehicles must be able to retrieve or recover disabled vehicles, ranging from cars, trucks, etc. that are simply inoperative and stranded on the roadside, to those that have flipped over or run off of the road into fields, ditches or ravines.
The simplest and most commonly recognized tow truck is probably the old "wrecker" design, which typically consists of a truck having a utility bed mounted behind the cab and a recovery boom having a cable and winch which is used to lift two wheels of a disabled vehicle off of the ground so that it can be towed to a repair shop. Many of these recovery booms now include a hydraulically operated telescoping section which extends and retracts. Such booms are more versatile than conventional recovery booms.
Another improvement to the basic wrecker design is the advent of "rollback" beds. A rollback bed is a flat transporting bed that tilts and/or moves in a rearward direction until the rear end of the bed is at or near the ground. A disabled vehicle is driven, rolled or winched onto the bed, the bed is returned to its original position and locked in place, and the disabled vehicle is then transported to a repair shop. Unfortunately, due to space considerations, a rollback bed precludes the use of a rear-mounted recovery boom and/or a rear-mounted wheel lift assembly. Thus, a towing vehicle equipped with a rollback bed has limited recovery capabilities.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved recovery and transport vehicle or wrecker that is capable of a wide variety of recovery and retrieval operations without sacrificing transport capabilities. Such an improved wrecker should be able to safely and effectively retrieve disabled vehicles from a wide variety of situations on and off the paved roads, and should be able to safely and effectively transport up to two vehicles at a time.
The improved wrecker truck of the present invention combines all of the functional advantages of a rollback bed, a rear-mounted wheel lift assembly and a rear-mounted multi-purpose recovery boom into a single towing vehicle. The wrecker truck of the present invention includes an improved rear-mounted multi-function recovery boom that is shiftable between a raised position and a lowered position. In the raised position, the boom performs all of the operations of a standard recovery boom. In the lowered position, the boom performs all of the operations of a conventional rear-mounted wheel lift assembly. The recovery boom also includes an extendable section which enhances the capabilities of the boom in both the wheel lift mode of operation as well as the recovery boom mode. Further, the recovery boom works in conjunction with the rollback bed to shift the rollback bed to a raised platform position. In the platform position the recovery vehicle can load or unload vehicles or even boats from semi-trailers, loading docks and other elevated surfaces.
The improved wrecker of the present invention also utilizes an improved tow bar assembly that can pivot when the boom is used as a wheel lift in which the truck is used to lift two wheels of a vehicle off of the ground for towing, and which further locks in place when the boom is used to guide the cables from either of two winches towards a disabled vehicle. The tow bar also serves as a platform to enable any of a variety of modular towing attachments to be removably secured to the tow bar/recovery boom assembly.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a vehicle having a rear-mounted recovery boom and a rollback bed for retrieving and transporting other vehicles such as disabled trucks, automobiles, or vintage cars that
Another object of this invention is to provide an improved wrecker truck that can transport up to two vehicles at a time.
A further object of this invention is to provide a wrecker truck having an improved rear-mounted multi-function recovery boom that also serves as a wheel lift.
These and other objects of the invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following description.